slowing to notice

This is what I've seen lately, on the days I've slowed down enough to notice. I posted an article on facebook a friend had shared a couple of weeks ago called  "Slow Down to Save Time" , mostly because I liked the title. Slow down to save time. It resonated with me. Some how, intuitively, I knew it was true.

There's not much logic to this habit I've developed of washing the dishes by hand. It definitely takes more time than loading up the dishwasher and only hand washing what won't go in.  It's been nearly a month now, and the repercussions are obvious. The house is messier. Paddy doesn't get it. He uses the dishwasher at the weekends when I try to bow out of the kitchen. He thinks I should give up so I can get on with everything else, and he'd like me to hang out with him. I'd like him to hang out with me, in the kitchen. I like a man with a tea towel. It's not that he won't help when I need it, it's just that he can't see the benefits.

The girls are really getting the hang of washing and drying the dishes. They do it most days, at least once or twice. It's a fantastic way to get us hanging out altogether in the kitchen, and it's a nice uncomplicated job for them to do, in chunks if necessary. Sometimes they just need a bit of focus, they just need to be reminded that we are all in this together, and the dishes do that perfectly. We have fun in the kitchen. When they are in there with me doing the dishes they often get to help me cooking or baking as well. We talk. I'm not saying it's all Little House on the Prairie and there's never any complaining, not at all. But once they get over themselves and get on with the job we enjoy being together, and I really appreciate them.

But I'm actually doing the dishes by hand for myself. I find this space when I'm washing the dishes that I don't find any other way. My hands get on with the cleaning, and my mind is free. I think, I pray, I sing, I write... all in my head. I process the events of the day, or go over what's ahead of us. I can't rush, there's no point, I'd only break something. I get into a slow rhythm. I notice things.

In the evenings when I'm tired I find washing the dishes by hand easier than loading up the dishwasher. I know it sounds crazy, but I think it's something to do with that dyspraxia story that's brewing. Washing a bowl in one sink, and then slipping it into the rinsing water in the other requires hardly any conscious thought. I find myself at peace. My breath slows. I enjoy it. And when the job  is finished (even if sometimes it's not finished till the next day) I'm satisfied. The dishes are often cleaner than they were out of the dishwasher, and sitting on the dish rack over night they are drier. And a bench of dishes is easier to put away than a whole load in the dishwasher. I used to get the girls to unload the dishwasher in the mornings but that was a big task, and I had to keep them focused the whole time. Now I do a bit, and they do a bit, and before we know it it's done.

The fact that the house is messier hasn't bothered me, and that's a surprise. I've realised how many hours, literally, I would spend tidying up each week. Perhaps I've dropped my standards, but I think actually it's more that I've found a truer, more genuine standard, one that reflects what's important to me. And it's been very clear to me that I was obviously doing too much of this tidying up business on my own. It was time for a bit more labour division.

I had a talk to the girls last week about the bomb site their rooms had become. I got a big storage container and "paid" them in stamps on their stamp charts to put as many of the messy, clutter-creating toys in it. I encouraged them to put in the plastic ones especially. We filled an 80 litre box easily. I told them we'd get it out at the end of Lent and then decide what we'll keep and what we'll give away. At that point it will be high stakes. I will present them with a bowl of gold coins and pay them for each toy that stays in there.

I've cleared out their rooms before, but I've never done it this thoroughly. Isobella especially seems to produce "stuff" on a daily basis. Notes and letters and plans and creations and random treasures from all over the place. They gather on her desk, in her drawers, on the shelves in her cupboard, they spread everywhere. And once they are there, she doesn't know what to do with  them. She can't order or classify them, and asking her to decide what she wants to keep and what she wants to throw out pushes her over the edge. That's another story too, about the hidden dyslexia that we've discovered she battles with.  I've taken out the shelves from her cupboard, and removed a whole piece of furniture from her room. And there's been a fair bit of rubbish smuggling going on, I can tell you that. But the girls are happy with the result. Their rooms are so much easier to tidy. And they are more peaceful, easier to play in.

I don't know if I'll keep up washing dishes by hand after Lent. I hope so, because it feels good to me. But it does mean it's harder for me to get to bed, and if I don't get to bed early, I can't get up early and write. I really want to get the first draft of that novel finished this year. I have to write.

But I'm wondering whether, as time goes by, I'll be able to find a rhythm for myself that will include washing the dishes. There's something that makes sense about what I've been doing, as crazy as it sounds. My world has shrunk, in many ways. It has shrunk to this big old camp kitchen of mine. I cook, I bake bread, I feed the girls, I wash the dishes, all in this one big space with windows overlooking the garden, and an opening into the dining room where I can look out to the bush and the water. Time slows when I'm in the kitchen. Whole mornings go by when I haven't ventured any further than this one space. There's something very good and simple about that. And when I slow and time slows, my mind expands. Stories brew, sit bubbling away on the stove in my mind. Their ingredients laid out on the bench, being gathered and prepared, bit by bit.

how it is in March

Monday was the first day in months that the girls spent completely inside. It rained all day, and it was grey and dull until late in the afternoon when the clouds lifted a little and the light was brighter. I looked around and noticed the brightness streaming through the windows in the dining room and lounge and turned the lights off. I thought about this light and how good it felt to have it back, but I knew it wasn't for long. Soon the months of muted light will be with us. The light we had that afternoon when the clouds lifted is the light that we will celebrate at the end of winter, when it finally stops raining. And that is a long way away.

Tuesday was the first day I actually felt cold. I wore a jumper all day. The girls have started talking excitedly about winter, and how much they love the fire. I'm settling in to the shorter days, the girls are easier to put to bed, and the darkness helps me get to bed too, but I know what we are in for. Our first winter in this house last year was dark and cold. We haven't had the roof fixed yet, and there's already a bowl out in the hall for the leak. But it won't be like that forever. We have plenty of plans, plenty of work to be done.

I've been so happy to be sugar-free. I found a recipe for muffins that uses left over porridge and only a smidgen of sweetener. I didn't believe it would work, and when it did, I was ecstatic! I've made them four times now with honey and sultanas. And then I realised that I'd eaten way too  many salicylates. And I was hoping Greer would be ok with them but she's not. We've both been eating too many salycilates. I'll try the muffins again another day with Maple Syrup, when I get some of the real stuff, but there won't be any until then.

I thought I was onto a good thing when I decided to start using the breadmaker again too. I got all excited, and made my own gluten free bread as well. I thought baking bread could be just the thing to do when I'm hankering to bake something sweet. But Isobella has declared she "hates" every batch I've made of wheat bread, because I've been making it wholemeal. And the fresh gluten free bread I made last night was so irresistable that I ate way too much of it and felt yuck. I knew what the culprit was; fresh yeast. I thought I'd found myself some new comforts. But there are no comforts here. I can't hide.

But there are two cupboards that are nearly all cleaned out and re-organised. The sleeping bags are all packed away, and I pulled out the girls' winter shoes and they pranced around in their slippers. Their dressing gowns are out too. They'd have worn them non-stop if I'd let them. Are we ready for a new season? Maybe we are.

finding our rhythm

It starts the night before, when I measure two cups of porridge into the pot and cover it with four cups of water and a splash of vinegar. I set the table then too, just the placemats and spoons usually, and then the candle in the middle of the table. The floor around the table may be covered with toys, there might be books all over the couches just out of frame, and there's often a load of washing drying in front of the window, but the table is clear. The book is the piece de resistance. It sits invitingly at my place setting. The girls know what it means now. In the morning I cook and then pour the porridge. Both kinds of milk go in jugs on the table, as does the brown sugar. I serve the sugar, they serve the milk. I light the candle, we pray, and then we eat, and while we eat, I read.

This isn't anything like how we used to do homeschooling. I longed to find a rhythm for our days but it eluded me. I was too busy trying to "fix" my biggest girl, convinced I could get her "ready" for school, whenever that was going to happen. But I realised while she was at school last year that there is no easy fix. Her brain is brilliant and wayward, usually at the same time. This was confirmed by the assessment we had done just recently. So we have returned to homeschooling again completely free. There is no fixing needed.  What is needed is what we have in abundance; time and freedom.

I read this incredible post about rhythm and order in January, just at the time we decided to give up school for good. It baffled me and wooed me at the same time. Candles at breakfast? We never eat in darkness, not even in the middle of winter. Setting the table so it looks beautiful? We had eaten breakfast in the kitchen pretty much the whole time the girls were at school last year, them at the little kids table and chairs, me standing up, yelling at them to hurry up between mouthfuls. But the author's thesis was simple, and it rang true; "...stop trying to order the child, and bring order and beauty to the environment."

I don't know how to express to you that I've never seen myself as one of those mothers. One of those mothers who make beautiful things and have beautiful things and have children who make beautiful things. (That's another story in itself.) I looked at that table set with candles in the post linked to above and half scoffed. Me? Create something beautiful? That was the kind of thing those mothers did. But then I found myself putting my favourite candle in the centre of the table one night before I went to bed. The table was clear, and I realised it would be so simple to lay out the place mats now, that I'd be silly not too. We'd already started reading together at breakfast time, but putting the book at my place setting, well, that came in an inspired rush and before I knew it I had made something beautiful. A place for us to gather at the start of the day, a place that would draw us, woo us in. And it does.

I wrote yesterday about Lent, the journey I have set off on. Even since I wrote those words a picture is becoming clear. The fruit of this journey I am on will be seen in the rhythm we find, and the freedom that waits. Lent for me this year is my un-learning. Un-learning the habits gathered like dust under eleven complicated years of marriage. Lent will be my re-building. Which will become the re-building of us all.

monday

I had a bit of a melt down on Monday. Monday is the day I try to get most of the cleaning done. As a teenager and young adult I resisted my mother's weekly cleaning schedule kicking and screaming all the way, but as the years have gone by and I've added on a husband and children, weekly cleaning has seemed more and more reasonable. Now that we are out here in this enormous house in the bush, it's a necessity. By the time a week rolls around you can see the dust piled up in the corners, and the dog hair and the sand, and the mud and the dead insects. So Monday is cleaning day, and that's just how it is.

It's still holidays of course, so getting the house cleaned with three tag-alongs is an undertaking, even in the best of circumstances. I decided to turn it into challenge for the two big girls, with manageable tasks, and plenty of rewards. We started off really well. They tidied the floors of their bedrooms, cleaned the vanities in the two bathrooms, and had a go at cleaning the toilets too, after I'd done most of the job . They were pretty happy, but I hadn't even started the vacuuming, because I had to manage them all the way, and we were more than half-way through the morning. I started vacuuming while they carried on in the bedrooms and unloaded the dishwasher, and then it all fell apart. Abigail had turned the dishwasher on while we weren't looking, and it had run long enough to make all the clean dishes wet again. So Greer, very gallantly at first, had to dry everything before she could put it away. Ella was supposed to be carrying on tidying up the piles of chaos in her room where she'd cleared the floor by just picking stuff up and dumping it somewhere else, but, as usual, her tidying kept turning into playing or reading. Greer was slowly getting the dishwasher unloaded, but she had Abigail as a very keen helper, and by the time I went to check on them a bit later, unloading the dishwasher had become a vast picnic game, with every single dish from the dishwasher laid out  in an arc on the floor. The floor that hadn't been vacuumed yet, let alone washed. I think you can imagine.

I stayed calm, at least I thought I stayed calm, and left them to undo their playing, because all I really wanted to do was get on with the vacuuming. I like vacumming, as long as I don't get too many interruptions, but here it takes hours, so I really had to get on with it. A few minutes later Greer was standing in front of me, telling me that she had been carrying some plates and one of them had tipped onto the floor and broken. My heart sank. I followed her to the kitchen. Sure enough, one of my favourite plates was lying in pieces on the floor. I walked out with tears in my eyes. I didn't want to talk to them, and I couldn't face cleaning it up. I walked down to the hall, shut the doors behind me, sat by the bookcase and started putting the books that were on the floor carefully back on the shelves. The tears kept rolling.

I wasn't sad, and I wasn't stressed, but my brain felt like it was full of exploding fireworks, and I was exhausted. Micro-managing three children while trying to clean the whole house had done me in. I sat on the floor crying over the books for ages. The girls kept coming to see how I was and to ask when they could have their next marshmallow. All they wanted was ticks and rewards and a prize-giving and it just made me feel small and tired and taken for granted.

I managed to pull myself together, but I was quiet and slow for the rest of the day. I told the girls I wasn't ready to do ticks on the chart or marshmallows, and so they eventually stopped asking and went off to play. I sat and ate lunch by myself with a good book, and then I read something that was a revelation.

I'm reading "Intimacy and Solitude: balancing closeness and independence" by Stephanie Dowrick. I'm reading it with a pencil for a book mark and I'm underlining and scribbling notes everywhere, because it's that good. The part I was reading was was about the development of "inner security" through a child's early relationships. This was what jumped out at me;

"When things are going well for an infant, the mother stands in for the parts of the infant which are helplessly immature, and comforts the infant through the stages of learning which teach the child that although need is felt within, it must be met from without."

I realised in a flash that what had worn me down wasn't the cleaning, or trying to do it with three children tagging along; it wasn't the broken plate, or the fact that the day was more than half over and I still had so much to do, although it all contributed, it was Isobella's room. Isobella is a whirlwind, her brain is like a whirlwind, and her room mirrors this exactly. For her, tidying up is torture. It is nigh on impossible for her to sort through her chaos and create even a modicum of order. I have been her chief tidy up-er for nearly eight years. I never expect her to tidy up completely on her own. I always have to make her tidy up, and always micro-managing. "Put that there, move those over here, throw those things out."  And I always carry on where she gives up. I have been "standing in" for her need for order her whole life. And for the first time I admitted to myself that this causes me to feel a constant low-level, often unnoticed, stress. It was time to stop "standing in."

I know I am making this out to be simpler than it is. There are all sorts of questions that arise, such as, does Isobella really have a need for order, or am I projecting my own need for order onto her? But the fact of the matter is that I need her floor to be clear so that I can vacuum it, and she needs to be able to clear her surfaces so that we can dust, mostly because Greer is allergic to dust, but also because I think it's important for her to have use-able space in her room and for her to learn take care of her possessions.

The back-story here is that a couple of months ago I figured out I am pretty dyspraxic. That's another story for another post, but I'll tell you this much. It means that I have enough trouble keeping my own stuff ordered and organised, let alone anyone else's. So my daughter's chief tidy up-er is, by nature, an average tidy up-er herself. And Paddy is no more skilled in this area than I am. I tell you, it's the blind leading the blind.

I've written about my struggles with chaos before, and order was my word for 2011. I wrote about chaos and order, and sought to find my own version of order, well before I even knew what Dyspraxia was. I was searching for some kind of ordered nirvana, and yet, instinctively, I knew my order was never going to look like any one else's.

If tidiness is just not on your radar, or you're happy with whatever level of tidiness is achievable on any given day, then you might have come to my house as a visitor and thought it looked pretty tidy. If you are a sworn and proud tidy person (like my sister and Mum are) then you'll have come to my house and seen that there is always something that needs doing. Always a basket of washing sitting somewhere, dishes on the bench, a cupboard in disarray, or a bedroom down the hall that hasn't been tidied for a week. And this is my reality; I actually like a certain amount of order and cleanliness. Clutter and mess for me are like visual white noise. So whatever tidiness and order you see on any day, it will be the best that I could do, and was probably hard-won.

This is quite an admission. I spent the first part of my life trying to rebel against my mother's strict sense of order. I was labelled the "messy one" in the family. As I grew older I realised I wasn't that messy at all, and decided that I had been unfairly labelled. Nevertheless, chaos was always my default setting. I never could quite understand why no matter how hard I tried to be organised, chaos was only a scratch under the surface. I partly came to terms with this last year, when I wrote a post about having grown up living in two worlds. That was really a breakthrough. As soon as I admitted I had my father's relaxed and anti-establishment home-making genes, as well as my mother's, I somehow gave myself permission to be tidy, as contradictory as that sounds. I gave up my rebellion against order once and for all, or so I thought. The house was definitely tidier.

Then we moved here, where it takes half an hour just to vacuum the lounge and dining room, and where dirt, in every form, is a daily part of our lives. The girls spread out from one bedroom to three, and for the first time Isobella had her own desk, her own bedside table, her own dresser, and her own wardrobe. You might think that would make it easier for her to keep her room tidy, but it's actually had the opposite effect. She now has three or four times as much surface area to spread out her creations and clutter, piles and treasures.

Right now I'm writing at the dining table while the girls play around me. I'm not ignoring them, but I am getting the words out while I can, because this story is good for me to write. They have taken out pretty much every puzzle we own, and have spread the pieces around on baking trays and tins as "biscuits" and put them all in the oven. They are happy, and they are occupied. Right now I don't care about the inevitable chaos. The puzzle pieces that will be strewn from the kitchen and down the hall to the lounge. I don't care that the puzzles will be all mixed up, and I don't care that someone, probably me, hopefully with helping hands, will have to sit down and re-order it all. I'm happy because they are happy, and I'm happy because I'm getting these words out.

You see, I can handle chaos. I've grown up with it close, either from within or without. I've learnt to control it, and when I need to I can. But my brain is like a tight rubber band that has to let go with a ping and unravel regularly, and that's exactly what my environment is like too. Chaos and order come and go like the tide. It's the two worlds of my upbringing, it's my wild brain, and it's the dyspraxia. It's just the way I am.

I can't expect any more of my eldest daughter than I expect of myself. Her brain is even wilder and harder to control than my own. But I don't need to take responsibility for something she's old enough to take responsibility for herself, even though she may seem to be less than capable in that area. So I am resigning as her chief tidy up-er. I'm not saying I don't care how messy her room gets, not at all. But the micro-managing is over. I am making peace with her precious chaos.

spring

I think it's finally spring. These flowers were the sight that greeted me during the weeks when we were all sick. A friend of Mum's had given them to her, and she shared them with me. They gave me hope and something beautiful to look at when the house was in disarray. They made me happy.

Something else is making me happy at the moment, and it's very good news. But there's a story to tell first, of course. Last Friday after I wrote the previous post Paddy and I went to see our therapist/counsellor who we'd managed to get an appointment with at short notice. I went out in a short-sleeved t-shirt for the first time, and the sun on my arms was warm. We've been seeing this woman on and off for about five years, and she's extremely smart. She works us out (or even better, gets us to work ourselves out) in an hour, every time. That's good value!

I told her a version of what I told you last week, how I'd realised that I'd had this sub-conscious victim thing going on, and that I could see now where my communication had been laced with resentment. The words I was using in our communication that week may have been innocent, but the tone was not. I apologised to Paddy, I told him I would have got on my knees if I needed to, I was that sorry. There's something safe about feeling sorry, when I'm really sorry I know I've got to the end of myself, I've uncovered everything that can be uncovered, gone where I need to go. Something is finished.

Our counselor then pulled out a set of cards with words on them, representing a range of human needs. She gave us a pile each, and asked us to choose three. "What were your needs at that time?" she asked us. "At the time of the conflict, what did you really need?" We each went through our set of cards and pulled out the words that resonated. There were plenty of words and phrases I liked, but only a handful that I knew were right for that moment.
Authenticity, consideration, mutuality.
Paddy chose his three easily, and I understood them straight away.
Respect, appreciation, acknowledgement. 
It's not rocket science really, is it?

We got to buy a set of cards and bring them home, and this is where the story gets good. I had a great time the next morning writing in my journal and reading through the cards. I laid the cards out around my laptop, up at our big dining table where I'm sitting now. They were breathtaking in their sheer number, and in the kaleidoscope they represented. I was looking at words that stood for almost every possible need an adult could have. I found myself asking some really good questions, and answering them with the cards.

The first question I asked myself was this. "What needs am I meeting when I write?" This is what I came up with;
meaning and purpose, clarity, creativity, time alone. 
Then I asked myself the opposite question. "What needs am I meeting when I choose to do other things, rather than write?" (By other things I mean the things I would normally choose to do in the evenings rather than write, like clean up the kitchen, tidy and clean the house, or do washing.) And I came up with;
order, beauty and aesthetics, efficiency, time alone. 


In effect, the needs I meet by writing are very similar to the needs I meet when choose not to write. If that sounds Irish, bear with me. I'm talking about the time I have most control over, which is the evenings, after the girls are in bed. That's the time I'm most likely to write. But usually once the kids are in bed you'll find me pottering around, re-ordering after the day's activity. I'll be tired, but usually happy enough, and certainly satisfied once I'm finished. I will have met some of the same needs that I could have met by writing. Time alone, order, beauty and aesthetics, creativity. And usually if I've been pottering around in my own space I will have been thinking away and created some sort of clarity in my head as well. Unfortunately though, I'll usually still want to write, here or in my journal, or at least do emails and read a few blogs. Which is how I end up going to bed way too late, and getting way too tired.

But isn't it a funny thought. Who would have thought I could meet some of my deepest needs by folding washing?!

Now here's the good news. I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as Nanowrimo. It's never really grabbed me before, but somehow, mysteriously, this time I just wanted to do it. My friend Marita is doing it too, so we are keeping each other honest. I've written 3053 words since Tuesday. I'm way behind on the Nanowrimo target of 50,000 words by the end of November, but I'm way ahead of any hopes I ever had of actually writing this thing before the kids leave home. Let me put it this way, this idea, which I've mentioned a few times here, has been on the back burner for seven years. As of the 1st of November, it is officially on the front burner! That, my friends, doesn't just make my day, or my week, or my month, it basically makes my whole life! This is an astounding, near-miraculous thing! Worthy of many exclamation marks!!!

So this is what I asked myself last weekend as I sat right here with that pile of cards. I asked myself "what are my needs for this month, being the month I will be attempting to write 50,000 words?" And this is what I came up with.
 - time alone
 - order
 - efficiency
 - power in my world.

Is that surprising? It was to me. I would have thought I'd come up with some of the other words from the pack, like creativity, peace, and beauty. But no. To give myself a good shot at writing 50,000 words this month I need power, order, and efficiency. Who would have guessed.

Here is the really good news of it all. I've been setting my alarm and getting up at 5:30am every morning to write. To do this I've set my alarm (on my phone) to go to bed by 9:30pm every night. I've had to leave the dishes in the sink, ignore baskets full of washing and toys strewn across the floor. I have to walk past the TV, past emails and the internet, past long chats late at night. It's made me grab efficiency by the scruff of the neck and make it mine so that I can get the bare minimum done. It's made me leave jobs for Paddy to do the next day (when he's working  nights) even though I'd rather do it then, and do it my way. The result has been a messier house, three thousand words, and a happy me. There are some details I'll still have to thrash out. I do still want to spend time with that husband of mine, that goes without saying. And I know that when there's sickness in the family there will be days when I have to give up on the early mornings. But I think I've more or less found the way I want to spend the rest of my life.

If you've read this far, thank-you. That tells me that you are interested, and that you might even care. You might be my sister, or a treasured friend, or an old friend, or a new friend, or someone I haven't met yet, but if you read this far  then you've put yourself on my team. If I ever complain about tiredness or busyness or feeling lost in life, please remind me of the words I've written today. You are my witness!

coming up for air

This weekend we were able to start shifting some of our stuff into the garage at our new house. It is great that the owner has let us do this, and it will make moving weekend much more straightforward. We emptied the storage unit we hired when we got the house ready to put on the market, we got everything down from the attic, and we took all the banana boxes you saw empty in my last post, now filled. What is sitting in our new garage looks like a small house-lot. Of course, if you came to visit our house today you wouldn't even realise anything was missing.

We tromped up and down our front stairs carrying boxes and furniture all Saturday and Sunday afternoon. After doing this for the umpteenth time I realised I actually like moving house. When it was just me and my sister and Mum we shifted a lot, sometimes as often as every year. Packing the house up to move became a familiar routine, and looking at new flats was exciting. Even after Mum re-married and we settled down, we still ended up shifting house every few years. I remember one moving day when I was at University but still living at home, I had packed my entire bedroom (minus the bed) into my little banged-up car the night before moving day. I drove to the supermarket where I was working for the day, the car jam-packed with stuff, and then drove to our new house straight after work. I got there well before the moving truck and the rest of the family. I was that keen.

It's a funny process, shifting house. Everything we own will be rendered transportable. It will be wrapped and packed away tightly, or emptied and cleared. Little things will be packed next to other little things, breakables will be wrapped and tucked into other breakables. I can't tell you how many boxes of books I shifted this weekend. Everything in order, everything contained. When I decided that order would be my word for the year, I never imagined we'd be shifting house, and I never would have thought that moving had anything to do with order.

There is plenty of shifting happening in other ways as well. Ideas are being packed and unpacked, wild dreams are being made room for. Treasures are being sorted and classified, ready to be put away, their season of use ended. Change is everywhere.

So it's busy inside my brain. I am tired. More sleep would help. But this is the best rest I can give myself. Writing is how I tidy up on the inside.

movement and rest

Yesterday it was exactly a month until moving day. While the house was on the market we lived in an unnatural state of order. I had a genuine fear of "stuff" the whole time. Nothing came in, plenty went out. I didn't let the girls bring home so much as a piece of paper! Once the house was off the market, we more or less got back to living like we normally do, and now, with four weeks ahead of us, the house is already filled with boxes.

Moving house is one of the most stressful things we can do. There's a list that counsellors and psychologists use, that list of the ten or twenty most stressful things a human can go through. There's tragedy and disaster in there, and a bit of the ordinary too. New job, moving house, that sort of thing. Moving house.

What state will I be in, in a month's time? Will I be beside myself with exhaustion, mumbling and incoherent, about to curl up in a hermit's ball for a week?  Or will I be tired, relieved, but calm? This is where reality TV meets the voyeurism of blogging. As long as I stay sane enough to put a sentence together, you will watch the drama unfold. I could even add a little poll to my sidebar. You could click "yes" if you think I'll survive, or "no", if you think I'll be a blubbering mess at the end of it all. Let me just see about that....

I was going to write a post about rest a couple of months ago. You might remember I decided to go to bed early for Lent. This was a very genuine intention, and it counted for a lot, as far as I'm concerned, even if sometimes real life got in the way. What that intention did was change the way I considered bedtime. Before Lent, bedtime had just been the thing I got to eventually when everything else was done. During Lent it suddenly became the focus of my evening, the goal I elevated above every other, once the girls were in bed. For almost the first time in my life, bedtime was important.

There's a context here. I've got a history of overdoing things. I know the taste of burn out. I've spent most of my life so intent on making other people happy that I didn't know how to look after myself. "No" was a word I had to get married to learn to use. The day I decided to go to bed early for Lent was the Sunday before we put the house on the market; after three manic weeks of  painting, cleaning, tidying, sorting, and shifting whole rooms around. I was so tired I was shell-shocked and tearful.

That's what I don't want to be in a month's time.

But when it comes down to it, I'm not sure I know what to do to avoid it. I mean, we have a whole house to pack and move, as well other deadlines for some really exciting projects.  And then there are all the ordinary things which carry on regardless, like homeschooling, and the fact that there are five of us and we all like to eat, wear clean clothes, and see the floor we are walking on. These things alone take up most of my time.

One day at the beginning of Lent I read Psalm 127 in the afternoon prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours.

It is vain for you to rise before dawn,
and go late to your rest,
eating the bread of toil - 
to those he loves, the Lord gives sleep.


I imagine the bread of toil like a slice of stale bread that's been sitting on the bench all afternoon. It's dry, chewy, and curled at the edges. Some of us are better at eating the bread of toil than others. Some of us are probably just like our mothers, who ate the burnt chop and shouldered most of the work around the house simply because there was nobody else to do it. To us there is something safe and familiar about the bread of toil. We've spent so long eating it that the taste of anything else is foreign and extravagant. The bread of toil seems to take the moral high ground. Work is valued, and inactivity discouraged, right?

I've always struggled to see value in rest. For me, real rest is something I've come to as a last resort, and often with a sense of failure that I can't carry on. It's not something that I've been able to see as valuable in its own right. It's not because I think I'm invincible. I think it's just that activity has been such a big part of my identity. I achieve, therefore I am.

There's a tension here, of course. Necessary work is exactly that. It has to be done and there's no avoiding it. Work that is associated with fruitfulness is exciting and often a pleasure.  The work for a project that is finally getting off the ground after years of dreaming is a miracle in itself. And then there's the old proverb about work being its own reward. The feeling of a job finished and done well; there's nothing like it.

But if we just keep on going, we gradually become less efficient and less productive, and eventually come to a grinding halt. I like what Ovid wrote about rest:
Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. 
And then there's what Jesus said about rest:
Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. 

 I've read those words of Jesus countless times, I've meditated on them and I've tried to apply them. But I know now that I've never understood them. If I had, my life would have looked very different. Let's see how I go this time around.

thursday things

1. We are all suffering, to varying degrees, from our first bout of cold weather sickness. Greer has a horrible croupy cough which seems to have brought back the asthma we were hoping she had grown out of. Abigail has asthma too, and although not as bad as Greer did at that age there's been a fair bit of coughing over the last couple of nights. Greer is tired. She had a meltdown this morning because I asked her to brush her teeth so I put her in bed with a tray and some puzzles. It reminded me of how much I loved staying home sick as a child. This was not a privilege earned easily I should tell you. We had to either be throwing up or have a scientifically confirmed temperature to get a day off school. One day I remember I was feeling the need to prove my sickness so I could stay home. I was in bed with the thermometer, and Mum had kindly given me a cup of tea. I had a brainwave and immediately dunked the (mercury) thermometer into my cup of tea. Oh dear. The thermometer broke, of course. At a loss as to what to do, I lifted the cup to my lips and was about to sip. My sister, who though three years younger than me was always the more practical of the two of us, quickly piped up "stop!" and saved me from drinking mercury-laced tea!

2. Greer has her last day at kindy (pre-school) next week. She's not actually five until July, so she's finishing a term early. She's super keen to join Isobella and start homeschooling. She does enjoy kindy, and especially loves her teachers, but she also loves staying at home with her sisters. I'm looking forward to not having to go anywhere on two more mornings in the week. I've been thinking about our morning rhythms and how they still need a bit of tweaking. With kindy finished we'll have four mornings a week that we can just stay home.

3. Family rhythms are something I've been thinking about lately since I was recommended a new blog by a homeschooling friend. The Parenting Passageway is a lovely, thoughtful Waldorf homemaking and homeschooling blog. This was the first post I read - "An Ordered Outer World for a Peaceful Family." I found it very inspiring. Then after thinking about order and rhythms in the home for the last week or so, I only just remembered the other day that my word for this year is ORDER. I'd forgotten! And the funny thing is that the process of having the house on the  market, while being extremely consuming and exhausting, has resulted in a pared down, pleasantly ordered house. And I hadn't even thought of the word order once while we were doing it all. You don't need to know about the storage unit we've had to hire to shift half of our STUFF into to achieve this domestic nirvana though. Neither do our prospective buyers!

4. Speaking of the house, this Saturday is our auction. We have a hunch it won't sell at auction but we are expecting to have some negotiating going on next week. Once this house is sold we will let ourselves get very, very excited about the new one. I am so looking forward to having no more open homes. Two every weekend for the last month has been tiring.

5. And speaking of tired, I am. I'm really tired at the moment. Isn't it lucky I decided to go to bed early for Lent. Even though I haven't been perfect at it, I've been going to bed a lot earlier than I was. I hate to think how tired I would be now if it wasn't for Lent. As you know, I'm a novice when it comes to observing the church calendar. But it seems to be a natural and good thing to observe spiritual seasons as well as earthly ones. It makes sense to me to have a season where we consciously restrict activity. Restriction of activity does not have to be viewed negatively. If it's an unhealthy activity, such as a bad habit, then restriction of activity is going to actually bring freedom. If it's restriction of activity that makes room for rest, then ultimately it's life-giving. Looking at Lent in this way makes me think that observing a rest day or a sabbath in our week could be like having a mini-lent every week. Paddy has worked on Sunday nights for most of our married life, so Sunday as traditional rest day has never worked for us. But I've been longing to find our own rhythm for rest despite this. At the beginning of the year I decided to make Sundays a no-internet day for me. It's been amazing how this one small thing has really made Sundays feel different, and somehow restful. I look forward to it. The culture we live in would have us believe that restriction is bad and that more is always better. Most of us know too well how untrue this is.

a word for 2011

Have you got a word for this year yet? I didn't really have one last year, although I had some ideas that were right for me, they just never evolved into one word. The year before that my word was hope. That word was spot on, and it served me well.

This year, my word has found me, rather than me finding it. It came to me one day just before the end of last year, and it hasn't left since. It's not a word I would have thought up on my own. Actually, this word doesn't come to me naturally at all. But I've discovered over the last two weeks that it has many rewards.

My word for 2011 is order.

When I last wrote I told you about my intentions for this year. To write and exercise every day, to watch a movie with Paddy once a week, to spend a day alone once a month. These things aren't huge or impossible goals, but they will take commitment, and will involve some good time-management. This is where order comes in. You see, I have a feeling that a bit of order is going to be my friend this year.

If you know me, particularly if you are family, you're probably having a good chuckle to yourself about now. You wouldn't call me an ordered person. I wouldn't call myself an ordered person. Order and it's family of words; routine, schedule and timetable don't normally do it for me. I'm definitely an unstructured person. I'm relaxed, spontaneous, fairly messy, often disorganised, and I lose things. Some of this is because I'm a dreamer at heart, and very absent-minded, but some if it us just because I fit with that unstructured personality type.

I've tried to instigate various routines for myself over the years. I've started routines for housework, babies' sleeps, mornings, writing, and exercise. None of them have stuck. It's not that I give up easily, or that I don't value routine at all, it's that I find it very difficult to do the same thing, at the same time, every day. There is something innate in me that resists it. I am not a creature of habit.

That's not to say I haven't appreciated a bit of routine. Ironically, I always feel good when I have some routines, for as long as I can manage to keep them up. Someone once pointed out to me that it's important for unstructured people to have some structure in their lives. I guess that conversely that means that structured people need to also have some spontaneity in their lives somewhere.

But when I say "order" I don't mean strict schedule. I'm not about to write a timetable for our homeschooling, or decide that at 6:30am every morning I will be in the shower. Rather, I've identified some priorities in our day, and I've decided to make sure that those things get done first. For example, it seems to me that it will be a good thing if the girls and I are all dressed for breakfast with beds already made. It's easier to get on with the rest of the morning that way. We practise violin straight after we've finished eating, while Abigail is still in her highchair. That's the only time it works, so it's a priority. Then after that the girls empty the dishwasher. If that chore happens straight after breakfast then I don't have to battle with them to do it at another time when they are busy doing something else. Once that's done, it's teeth and hair and the rest of our day. And that's it. Simple and probably blindingly obvious to most of you. It's not a timetable. It's just a bit of order.

Order has worked well for me in the last two weeks. It frees up my time. It has inspired and enabled me to create some "quiet time" while Abigail is alseep where I write and the girls read, do puzzles, or play quietly. Which has in turn given me time to work on some projects I never thought I'd get onto this quickly. Order has enabled me to start something new - something very exciting which you will be hearing about soon!

I'm aware that things will change when the term starts and we have kindy and homeschooling activities to go to. Things won't be so simple then. But I've figured out something important. Order is easier to achieve when there is less to be ordered. You might think of this as keeping it simple, or less is more. However you describe it, it's obvious, and it's not rocket science. The simpler things are, the easier it is to order them. So I'll be choosing our commitments this year wisely. I'm not giving away my order!

Are you a structured or unstructured person? How does this influence your days? Do have a word for 2011? Tell me...